


Something Ferocious

by grammarpolice



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Blood Loss, Blood and Injury, Car Accidents, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt Malcolm Bright, Major Character Injury, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump, Medical Inaccuracies, Shock, Whump, spoilers to 1x15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:42:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22896664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grammarpolice/pseuds/grammarpolice
Summary: "Don't move."Why?Was he okay?
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & JT Tarmel
Comments: 32
Kudos: 185





	Something Ferocious

“Bright. Bright, wake up.”

It wasn’t ferocious.

“Fuck. Come on, man.”

The voice wasn’t malicious and vile, and it didn’t carry the growl of a monster. The words were chewed, softened in the way they fell into the air.

Sometimes, the world felt heavy.

It weighed on his back and on his shoulders like chains pulling down his ankles. It was suffocating at times, so much so that he couldn’t breathe past the sensation of burden, and the world hurt. The world was cold and malevolent, and Malcolm wasn’t used to warmth.

“Bright, please just open your goddamn eyes.”

There was a sense of urgency in the tone, and he wanted to slow it down. He wanted to ride the waves of life, float above them and be on top for once, and he wanted the world to feel light.

He was acutely aware of a pressure between his ribs, eating up space in his body and weighing him down like chains around his ankles. There was something inside of him, jarring when he groaned, and he stiffened, condensing his breathing. His chest swelled, expanding against his throat, and air squeezed through his clenched teeth.

“Don’t move.”

This time, the voice was stern and determined, biting cold and quick, grating rough against his ears. There was no warmth, and Malcolm was used to bitter cold.

It was comfortable, familiar.

It was like his father, bitter cold winter and cruel ice in his smile. It was eyes glazed over with murder, and it was starting to _hurt._

“Don’t move,” the voice said again.

Why?

He shifted, the pressure in his side pinching deep at muscle and pressing against his ribcage. There was a wheeze, a strangled whine, and it took him a moment too long to realize it belonged to him.

“Damn, you never listen, huh? Just—just don’t move, okay?”

Why?

Was he okay?

His eyes were heavy, weighing on his sockets, lashes intertwined and solidified. He tried to peel them apart, twitched his jaw to loosen the tension on his face, and he blinked, slow, cautious, because sometimes cold was freezing.

“Yeah, come on, Bright.”

_Bright._

Not _Kid_ , and the voice wasn’t Gil’s.

He sighed. Gil was warm and safe, and it wasn’t Gil telling him to open his eyes.

It wasn’t Gil telling him not to move, and it wasn’t Gil telling him why not.

Was he okay?

He wanted Gil.

He blinked again, and blur came into focus around a figure in front of him. They were large, larger than Gil, and even though Malcolm knew the voice didn’t belong to the former, a part of him wished he was wrong.

He was wrong often, more than he liked to admit.

He was wrong about inklings, and he was wrong when he didn’t listen to Gil, and he was wrong when he didn’t save the girl in the box. He was wrong when he thought his father was a good man, and he was wrong when he stabbed him. He was wrong when he twisted the blade, and he was wrong when he _liked_ it.

He was wrong, and he was just like Martin Whitly.  
“JT?”

JT’s mouth pursed, and his eyes softened when he nodded. He was clutching his right wrist to his hip, and his clothes were blackened, sweater torn near his waist and collarbone. Cuts littered his face, blood oozing sluggishly down his cheek from above his eyebrow, and his nose was scuffed at the bridge.

“Yeah,” he said. “Don’t move.”

The pressure in Malcolm’s side was growing from a throb to a sharp pulsation. He shifted slightly, and it pulled, and he knew.

“Why?” he asked, but he knew.

He looked down and blinked again when his vision faltered.

The glass shard didn’t look large from where it protruded between his ribs. It stood firm, hinged against his bone, and blood lined its edges, swelling the fabric of Malcolm’s dress shirt. He breathed, and it bit at his flesh. It was high, too close to his heart for comfort, and he remembered stabbing his father in a place a few inches above the glass.

Malcolm said, “Oh,” and the word was heavy on his tongue. He swallowed down sand, and his mouth seemed to produce more, absorbing all the moisture in his gums until all he could taste was blood. “What happen’d?”

He didn’t really need to ask, though.

Their car was a few feet ahead of them, skidded across the pavement. The front hood was up, crunched inward and contorted around itself, a belly of mechanics exposed. The front window was shattered, glass sprawled across the road, and headlights in fractions.

The sun was beginning to set, pink eating up blue and painting the sky in an almost peaceful pattern, even brush strokes across a canvas and clouds like ripe cotton. He wanted to touch the yellows and the oranges of the evening sun, and sink into its warmth, because sometimes he felt so cold.

“Uh… there, uh, we got in a crash,” JT responded. “You don’t remember?”

Malcolm did.

He remembered shock, and the dilemma that he was watching his last few moments, and he remembered accepting death. He remembered thinking he deserved to be in the hands of the grim reaper and not of an angel, and then he remembered that his father must have felt the same way when Malcolm stabbed him.

Malcolm remembered JT hissing, and the headlights of a blue car head-on, and he remembered tucking his head into the crooks of his elbows.

“I remember. H’w’d I get out ‘ere?” He hated the way the words fell from his tongue, and he hated the way that he wasn’t quite sure if he was truly saying them or not.

His side pinched him again, glass shard pressing against his stomach, and for a moment he thought he might throw up.

“I didn’t… I carried you. I didn’t think we should stay in the car, just in case…” JT trailed off, training his eyes on the pavement and wringing his hands together.

Malcolm nodded.

“What do I do?” His voice was open, vulnerable in the way it quivered, and Malcolm hated it.

It wasn’t cold, just wrong.

JT continued, “Our phones—both of them—they're broken. Like, smashed. And I don’t… no one’s driven by.”

They were on the side of the road, between grass and concrete, and Malcolm was leaned up against an iron barrier. It dug into his back, pressing against the skin on his neck, and when he twitched his side pulled again. “I think we sho’ld just wait,” Malcolm said. He thought for a moment, then added, “Wh’re’s the other car?”

The blue one.

JT pointed across the road. The top of the car stuck out from behind a ditch, the rest obstructed by distance and blur.

“The driver’s dead.” JT swallowed, and Malcolm knew the look of guilt that swelled inside his eyes.

JT had been driving.

JT had jerked the steering wheel when the car slid across ice.

"t's not your fault."

"Yeah." JT nodded, tearing his gaze from the car. "I... I know."

“What ‘bout his phone?”

“Dead.”

Malcolm nodded, shifted, then winced when pain ran up his muscles.

JT’s face melted into a deeper frown. “There was a gas station a couple of miles back,” he said.

Malcolm scoffed. “Like, fifteen.”

“Doesn’t matter.” JT shrugged, eyes tracing over Malcolm’s features. “It’s better than just sitting around here.”

“No, JT. ‘t’s pointless.”

“It’s the best shot we got, bro.”

“No, ‘t’s not.”

“Bright—”

Malcolm’s breath shuddered against his chest. “It’ll take you hours, even if ‘ou run.”

JT let out a long breath.“I can't just sit here,” he said.

Blood was beginning to dry against Malcolm’s torso, shirt plastered to his skin. The muscles in his chest constricted around the glass, holding it in place between his ribs with the slow inhalation of his lungs. His flesh was starting to tingle, meandering deep into his torso and around his stomach, numb like bitter cold but screaming like the sting of a burn all the same. “A car’ll come soon.” His tongue was dry and he rubbed it across the roof of his mouth, flicking it forward to hit against his teeth.

“We’re in the middle of goddamn assfuck nowhere.”

It was true.

The road stretched on in front and behind them, identical as far as eyes could see. Trees crowded the sidelines, behind the iron barrier Malcolm slouched against, green leaves of evergreens buried beneath the snow.

“And the only car we’ve seen for the past hour is… bottom line is we’re screwed, Bright, so unless you’ve got a better idea, I—”

“Please, just—” Malcolm flinched at the lack of power behind his words. They were hard to get out, heavy and garnering little momentum, yet untouchable, swallowing breaths and spitting out nothing in return. “Jus’ don’t go.”

Something in JT’s face changed, softened, and his lips curled inward around his teeth.

“It’s worse to leave,” Malcolm added. “Just… it won’t make a d’ffrence.”

JT nodded, and he sunk to his knees before pulling himself backward to lean against the iron barrier, next to Malcolm. After a moment, he said, "My mom died in a car crash when I was six. I just..." He paused, sucking in a breath of air. "What if I took someone else's mom?"

Malcolm didn't reply because there wasn't much to say. Guilt ate up a person's chest until they were drowning and nothing could wholly pull them up long enough to get in a full breath.

The sun was setting behind the evergreens, crown peeking through just enough to stain the sky with a grey hue. It was cold, and the heat emitting from his side was beginning to dull. He shivered, body twitching slightly, glass biting against his flesh. He asked JT, “Are you hurt?”

JT’s lips split into a curt grin, and he replied, “Nah, not really.” His face fell when he looked at Malcolm. “Not like you.”

Malcolm knew that JT hadn’t meant it to be so blunt.

It was clipped, trimmed around the edges and superficial. It was scary because it was honest, and sometimes Malcolm didn’t always want to hear the truth.

Truth peeled the skin off of reality, left it bloody and raw and exposed in the ugliest and grisliest of ways. Truth told him his father was a killer and truth took his childhood and chewed it between rotten fangs.

Lies were safe.

Lies told him that everything would be all right, that he was normal, fine. Lies made him feel warm and protected, shielded from the real world and all of its horrors.

But JT wasn’t lying now, and Malcolm was cold.

His wound had long since stopped tingling, leaving nothing but pressure in his side. It was beginning to numb, settle deep into his bone and become one with his body, his flesh absorbing glass to construct a wholly new figure.

And it didn’t hurt.

It was almost familiar, almost serene.

_Almost._

He swallowed, and the metal dripping down his throat seemed to thicken.

“What do we do?” JT asked. “About… you know, _that_.” He gestured to Malcolm’s torso, face paling, and he tore his eyes away to meet Malcolm’s. “We should… we should leave it in, right?”

“Yeah,” Malcolm said, and he tried to ignore the way JT’s face blurred. He blinked.

JT nodded, slow. “Why isn’t there... more blood?”

Malcolm’s eyes fell to his torso, glass still stout, filtering in streams of moonlight as the night grew. He watched the rise and fall of his chest as if he wasn’t the one breathing. As if someone else was breathing for him, pushing air into his lungs and inflating his corpse.

It was terrifying and blissful.

He was so tired, and he didn’t have to do anything except keep his eyelids open.

Perhaps he’d let them close for a moment.

“The, uh, the glass is…” he struggled to pull words from his brain, like the shard had served coherent thought into shambles. “... the… it, uh, it’s h’lding it all—the blood— it’s holding it in. The glass is act’ng as a barrier and r‘placing what was damaged, so when… um, I mean, if you ‘ulled it out, all the blood would be released ‘nd I’d bleed out.”

“Well, fuck. Let’s not do that then.”

And JT sounded so far away.

Malcolm blinked, and then he blinked again when blur didn’t refocus.

His heart pounded against his chest, sweat beading down his throat, but it was cold outside.

_“You know what that means.”_

Malcolm's gaze shifted up because that voice didn’t belong to JT.

The tone was low, bitter with gravel and taunting. It was even, righteous and confident and so evil.

Martin Whitly looked younger as a figment of Malcolm’s subconscious.

He wasn’t wearing his white jumpsuit and his hair wasn’t grey, scarce at the crown of his head, slinking down his face into a beard.

He was clad in a red sweater vest, skin ironed out and smooth where it had been crinkled. He smiled, and his teeth curled around pink lips that weren’t coated with blood.

 _“What does it mean, Malcolm?”_ he asked.

“That ‘m goin’ into shock—”

“Huh?”

—Martin nodded. _“Thatta boy! You’ve always been so smart.”_ He met Malcolm’s eyes, clenched his jaw. _“Feeling cold? Numb? Detached?”_

Malcolm hummed, leaning his head back against the iron barrier and letting his eyes slide closed.

_“That’s what I felt like, too. After you stabbed me.”_

The words didn’t burn like they were meant to, they just rolled down Malcolm’s chin and onto the concrete beneath him. “I ‘on’t feel bad,” he said. “I l’ked it.”

_“I know. You’re my son, aren’t you? And truly, Malcolm, I’m flattered that you take after your old man—”_

“Come on, man, keep your eyes open.”

_“—What was your favorite part?”_

Malcolm’s mouth moved, jaw impossibly heavy against its hinges, and it took the boy a moment to begin talking, and another to register the words he was saying. “Twisting ‘t. The bla… blade.”

 _“Admirable.”_ Martin smiled. _“Though, I always enjoyed the little ‘pop,’ right after removing the blade from the body.”_ He was quiet for a beat, crouching down so he was only inches from Malcolm’s face, and although his father was nothing more than a hallucination, Malcolm could feel the man’s breath hot and sour on his face. _“You know,”_ he said. _“I might die._ ” Then he paused, smiling again. “ _But, you might die, too. So I guess it’s fair. Like father, like son.”_

Malcolm blinked again and his father was gone. He was vaguely aware of his body being jostled slightly, a soft fabric pressed over his shoulders. It smelt of blood and detergent and JT.

“I ‘tabbed him, ‘T.”

And Malcolm wasn’t sure why he said it, or if he even said it at all.

Maybe admitting it would make the world lessen its chokehold around his neck.

Or maybe it would just make everything stop.

He continued, or maybe he didn’t, words spilling from his tongue and onto his lap, “I stabbed ‘im, not my mot’er. She didn’... she was go’na, and then… I… an’ y’know what the ‘orst part ‘s?”

“Bright—”

“I _liked_ it.” He was slurring his words and he knew it. They tasted like sludge in his mouth, thick and hot and _metallic_. “I ‘anted to… to… I ‘on’t know if I want’d him to die, but I want’d it to hurt.”

“Bright, you—”

“You think it ‘urt?”

“For fuck’s sake, liste—”

“Do ‘ou think it hurt ‘im as much as it hurt me, JT?”

He just wanted to cry.

“I...I don’t know, Kid.”

_Kid—_

But it wasn’t Gil.

All he wanted was Gil.

JT said, “You gotta—”

_“Hey, Kid. Open your eyes.”_

The voice was so very warm. He wished he could crawl into Gil’s arms, even if he died there.

He blinked.

Gil crouched in front of him in the place Martin had been moments earlier.

Or had it been hours?

He didn’t really know.

 _“What are you gonna do?”_ Gil asked. _“Just die here?”_

Malcolm shrugged. “Doesn’t even ‘urt ‘nymore.”

Gil frowned. _“Looks like you’re in shock, huh?”—_

“...Come on, please…”

"—Mhm.”

Serenity washed over Malcolm once again, and it felt safe and warm. He was peaceful, contempt in a way he hadn’t been in twenty years, hadn’t been since twenty-four victims and a camping trip.

 _“Don’t die yet,_ ” Gil said. “ _I didn’t get to say goodbye to Jackie. I’ll be so sad if I don’t get to say bye to you—”_

“...Bright, you’re…”

—Malcolm frowned. “But you’re right ‘ere.”

Gil smiled fondly, chuckling. _“Oh, Malcolm.”_ He shrugged. _“I’m just a figment of your imagination. Stressed induced this time.”_

“But I….” A sob tore up his throat. “I want you t’ be here—”

“... Bright, listen to....”

—Gil looked at JT.

_“But he’s here. And I know you’ll be all right.”_

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if this is ooc! i don't know if it's just me but it's so goddamn hard to write these characters. i've only now just branched into writing jt and i don't even wanna touch dani or edrisa with a ten foot pole. 
> 
> also, i'm currently lacking in the creative ideas department so if anyone has any requests/ideas/prompts 
> 
> also also, i know this is unrealistic, it's just for fun :)


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